A variety of artificial surfaces have been proposed for recreation and sport purposes, and particularly artificial surfaces have been proposed for tennis-playing court surfaces. Such surfaces have in the past fallen into two general groups, the first group composed of artificial surfaces which attempt to simulate a grass-like surface with the employment of polymeric filaments secured to a base sheet, somewhat in the nature of a tufted or pile carpet. Other surfaces, particularly tennis surfaces, have encompassed the employment of a resin or polymeric-coated layer on a base sheet to provide a permeable or nonpermeable flat, relatively smooth surface, such surface depending upon the nature of the use, whether indoor or outdoor, and the nature of the sport or recreation or activity, and have employed both solid and foam backing layers.
Tennis court-playing surfaces have recently been proposed employing an open-cell, polyvinyl chloride, resin layer as the backing layer in order to provide for a proper resilience and ball-bounce characteristics. The latter classification of tennis-playing surfaces has included the use of a woven, fiber-glass sheet on which has been coated a vinyl resin plastisol containing glass microspheres and a polyvinyl chloride, open-cell, backing layer, either bonded thereto or separate, to provide for a surface having the desired tennis ball skid and spin characteristics and bounce height. The latter artificial surface has been characterized by a relatively smooth flat surface which in part reflects the design of the underlying, woven, fiber-glass, base sheet material. In addition, such surfaces should be abrasion-resistant, have low maintenance properties, be of low cost and easy to install, and preferably are waterproof or nonpermeable where they are employed in outdoor courts or conditions. Additionally, it is often desirable that such surfaces be dimensionally stable under a variety of heat and weather conditions such that the playing characteristics of the surface will not be altered with use, time and temperature changes.
Prior art artificial surfaces, and particularly tennis-playing court surfaces, have not been wholly satisfactory, particularly as regards cost and dimensional stability of the surface, since often, during the process of manufacture or under weather conditions or with time, the playing characteristics of the surface or the dimensional stability of the artificial surface have varied. These disadvantages of present-day artificial surfaces are well known and recognized.